No formal tasting notes since the gal was sick and she usually has a better nose than I. But I *really* enjoyed this wine. Nose wasn't anything special and it semmed kinda lite (could have sat in the decanter a bit longer to come up to temp). Very smooth with no noticeable tannins. After about a glass, the big taste was cherries. Not just a hint or a background but big, ripe, right-off-the-vine cherries.
At $17, the price was right. Will re-post when we get another bottle (soon as the gal gets all healed up).
-Andrew

IMHO this is always a great P/Q wine that goes in my cellat for mid-term cellaring (5-7).Because of the late arrival of a bunch of the 99s and the delivery of the 2000 Bordeaux futures I didn't buy hardly any 2000s as I decided to wait on the 2001s'. You caan betchur bippie I'll have a box of the 2-grand-an'one in there. WW [img]http://wines.com/ubb2/wink.gif[/img]

I'd been wanting to try it ever since we hit the reserve tasting room at BV and found we really liked their style. But something else always caught my eye at whatever local market we happened to visit. This weekend saw it for $2 less than normal and figured this was a sign. I'll have to get a 99 to compare, as well.
-Andrew

Yes Sed an' believe it or not there was even wine in the (gasp) 60s'. I had the good fortune to try the 1936 (first vintage) of the GDL, and can remember the taste and boquet to this day (If youse done' think thats' impressive, I have trouble bemembering breakfast). And the main reason I got into cellaring this stuff was an encounter with a vertical of BV and Heitz Marthas' from 64 to 74 held on consecutive nites. I fail to see the mania surrounding the so-called cult wines or the rationale that because you have a vineyard in Napa valley you can charge 75 bucks for your 1st release. Lots of the new kids on the block bash wineries like BV, Heitz, Martini, Clos du Val, Diamond Creek, Mondavi,and the proven producers because it's fashionable to point to some budding Super-Star winemaker. Haul them dudes out in 20 years and THEN we'll see just how good them be!(Should be inR&R I know. WW

WW just switched from a WERTY keyboard to a Dvorak keyboard like I did; that's why we have all those typos. Right WW? Once we get the hang of it; look out, break out the fire extinguishers.
P.S. WW is like those Grandmaster chess players; he can remember evey move he ever made in all the games he's played but can't rember his Zip Code.

Whaz a Gerty keyboard Sed-Sie? I allas' type the way I converse and have used bemem instsead of remem since my eldest daughter used it as her standard. And Foodster the men who were most responsible for the recognition of Califs' quality are looked on by the jet-set, silicon valley, boomer kids as ancient and outdated. They all need to sit down with a great bottle of 68 or 70 BV Reserve and see what great wine from Calif tastes like. The French have a classification ststem that's been in place since the mid-1800s that makes sense.
But I guarantee you no-one in Napa or Sonoma except the old group would entertain such a move. Speaking of BV they are not releasing anything from the 01 vintage I've been told until the buzz from the cellar contamination is resolved. WW

Should have been QWERTY. My typo. If you Type in typewriters history qwerty on Google it explains how the present keyboard letter set- up came about. QWERTY is the first 6 letters on the keyboard. Dvorak was a competing system that came later that showed you can type faster on it than QWERTY but did not stick because most typist had already leared the QWERTY system. A small sample of my useless knowlege.
I agree fully with your observations on wine production today. If it was not for prohibition we would have made "world class" status many years sooner than we did.

Sedhed, in the seventies my wife worked for a word processing company (now defunct) that tried to promote the Dvorak keyboard. She was trained to go out and train others on it. She traveled the country teaching the keyboard but businesses simply would not switch.

My wife was selected for the job because of her patience, and if you don't believe me on that--she has been married to me for 30 years plus! Anyway, she swears that the Dvorak keyboard is far superior in its layout.

The reason for the QWERTY keyboard is that when typewriters were invented the hammer action of the keys was too slow for human fingers (except ww's, of course). The QWERTY board was designed to slow fingers down.

Foodie:
I didn't know the Dvorak system was still trying that late. It's hard to convince a typist who can do 100 WPM to switch to another system.
I think the first typewriters were poorly machined and the letters were arranged in alphabetical order which caused a lot of jaming if you could type anywhere near 20 WPM. The original typing style was hunt and peck by the way.
When Remmington bought the patent and and the quality of the machines improved, Someone came up with the 10 finger no look method of typing; and qwerty was born. Or qwerty was born and some one came up with...
Either way, WW and I type in the original method.
To stay on topic, I just bought a 1999 BV Tapestry for $35, Anyone have a guess when it will be ready to drink?
It only took me 20 minutes to type this.

Grabbed the last two from the local grocery store. Popping one tonight for the V-day dinner. Wifey is still a tad under the weather, so we figured this would be a good alternative to opening something twice as expensive and risk her not fully enjoying.
We'll try to get some more expansive notes in.
-Andrew

Where the F* did the cherries go? Found them in the nose along with bell pepper and strawberry jam. Tates of toast & oak with black olives replacing the previous cherry tastes ( [img]http://wines.com/ubb2/frown.gif[/img]); subbtle tannins with a long vanilla finish. Served it a bit closer to room temp with a longer time in the decanter. No cherry taste, no chocolate or coffee. Very displeased with this go versus the previous. By itself, still very drinkable (we'd assign something like an 85). I'm hoping it was just ths seering style. Can;t think or type very well since we also enjoyed a Beeren Auslese as adesssert. Shew, better stop now bwfore I ambarass meself.
$17.9/btl
-Andrew

Andy-Babe understood every word. Are youse a mail-order graduate of the Weeners School Of Tiepin? Sounds to me like the grocery got a tad bit warm and your bottles suffered heat stroke. Too bad. Could be also that this is one of the myriad TCA tainted bottles.WW

Yikes, did I write that? Hoping this bottle was a fluke, although it didn't rear the ugly head of the TCA-taint everyone's talked about at BV. Will open the next in a few years, I s'pose. Wish we'd been able to do the fomal tasting with that first bottle so I'd have some coherent notes. Oh well, c'est la vie!
-Andrew